Crushing Tour de Bloom

A full Squad of Trek Red Truck guys was set to crush the 2016 Tour De Bloom featuring Brendan, Christian, Craig, Dylan, Geordie, Ty, Mike, and myself.

Stage 1: Leavenworth Road Race. 100 km’s of breakaway is a good way to describe this stage. In the first 10 km or so Michael, Dylan, and myself got into a large breakaway of 10 riders. The pack was still very motivated with many strong guys and teams that didn’t want to see it go. But when there are three TRT riders in the break taking 500watts pulls at the front the time gap will only extend exponentially at 20km to go we had approximately four minutes which was more than enough. Coming into the final km’s it was all downhill and into a strong headwind so the pace slowed a bit but everyone was so cracked that it was inevitable. With time bonuses on the line it was our goal to get as much as us in the top five as possible and after a little bit of a hairy sprint we managed to take 3rd, 4th and 5th. I was 3rd which was a little bit of a disappointment because I got caught out a little early and had to come from a little too far back. But that’s the way she goes sometimes.

Stage 2: Stage two was the Hill climb. Now I really don’t like hill climbs, but I figured that since this was a mass start hill climb that I would be ok. Well I was dead wrong. There’s just something about that type of effort that doesn’t agree with me. So I didn’t do as well as I should have and lost valuable time. However Dylan, Mike, and Craig had good rides finishing 7th, 3rd and 2nd respectively.

Stage 3: The Twilight crit. Now with Michael as the GC boy it was our job to deliver him to the line to get time bonuses, and we did just that; at seven laps to go we got together at the front and led it out for Mike. Dylan Davies did a post on Instagram and put it quite well, “Racing the Twilight Crit in Wenatchee's Tour de Bloom when we came together to ride a legit full squad lead-out train to deliver @mvdhcyclocross to 2nd in the sprint, made me very proud to be part of @trekredtruckracing and very excited what we can do properly later in our season. #tourdebloom”

Stage 4: The penultimate stage, this one was for all the marbles. And it was a good course for it too very windy and rolling. Made it a really to make some time gaps. Directly after the start there was a split in the crosswinds containing Myself, Mike, and Craig. There were also a lot of the other GC contenders in the break which was bound to be the case regardless. Within the first 50 km or so we already had four minutes there was no was this move was coming back with all the wind. So after a long 110km of rolling the breakaway we ended up getting second on the stage with Mike and 3rd in GC. Craig, Myself, and Dylan finished 5th, 6th and 7th on GC respectively. So it was a pretty good weekend of racing for the Boys, we missed out on the top step of the podium but it’s a long season and there are plenty of other opportunities.